Fans Don’t Keep Feelings a SEC-ret

Tennessee football fans complained after a game at Florida on Sept. 18 that some Florida students threw trash and shouted obscenities at them.

That’s mild for the Southeastern Conference, according to Thomas O’Toole of Scripps Howard News Service. For example:

--In the 1970s, a Tennessee fan set fire to a pompon and threw it into a crowd of Alabama fans.

--Five years ago, Georgia fans were doused with a hose at Auburn.

--At a Tennessee-Vanderbilt game a few years ago, a Vanderbilt fan wouldn’t put down his umbrella, so a Volunteer fan poured lighter fluid on the umbrella and set it afire.

Trivia time: The Pacific 10 Conference has had seven Heisman Trophy winners, four from USC. Who are the others?

Creative course: John Carter recently became eligible to play basketball at the University of Iowa.

He needed three credit hours in humanities and got them at Oglala-Lakota College in Kyle, S.D. His teacher was Calvin Jumping Bull, great grandson of Sitting Bull.

“We had different lectures and John learned how to put up a tepee and he helped with our dance contest and he helped in the children’s area,” Jumping Bull told the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

FYI: John Madden manages featherweight Alex Jorin, who fights on the undercard of the Riddick Bowe-Evander Holyfield heavyweight title bout at Las Vegas on Nov. 6.

Fed up: During the Cincinnati Reds’ 12-game losing streak, a fan left her front-row seat at Riverfront Stadium and said:

“I don’t even know why I come down here anymore. I’m not coming back tomorrow.”

The woman in question? Red owner Marge Schott.

Triple play: Richie Ashburn, a former standout outfielder for the Philadelphia Phillies, is not in baseball’s Hall of Fame, even though he had 2,574 hits and a lifetime batting average of .308.

Ashburn, who later became an occasional sportswriter and a broadcaster for the Phillies, observed, “I have a chance to become the first guy not to make it in three categories.”

Quick cure: Ryan Procop, 17, was disgusted after getting a 12 on the 14th hole during a practice round with two of his high school teammates at Glen Eagles Golf Club in Twinsburg, Ohio.

So he used his putter off the tee on the next hole, a par-three measuring 168 yards.

Result? A hole in one.

Trifle too late: From David Letterman: “Some sad news. Former major league outfielder Ethan Allen has passed away at the age of 89. The timing is awful because he just signed a two-year, $4-million deal to play for the Mets.”

Trivia answer: Terry Baker, Oregon State, 1962; Gary Beban, UCLA, 1967, and Jim Plunkett, Stanford, 1970.

Quotebook: Philadelphia’s John Kruk on chewing gum: “I chew about 15 or 20 pieces of gum. Four to start the game, four after our first inning, which with our pitchers takes quite a while. . . . “